Pixel Watch Might Have Outdated Hardware When It Arrives

According to the tip, the Pixel Watch will be using a Samsung Exynos processor, which isn’t a surprise given Google’s and Samsung’s recent close collaboration on smartwatches. The Galaxy Watch 4, for example, is the first smartwatch to come with Wear OS 3 out of the box and has the first Exynos chip that is supported by Wear OS. What is surprising and almost shocking is that the Pixel Watch might run on the Exynos 9110 chipset instead of anything more recent, like Samsung’s own Exynos W920.

The Exynos 9110 hails from 2018, back when smartwatches were still novel. That reveals how long Google has been working on the Pixel Watch and how set in stone that particular hardware was to its design. Changing the processor to something more recent could have set back the development by another year or two, negating the advantages of a modern processor.

At the same time, the 10nm Exynos 9110 is on par or might even be better than Qualcomm’s current 12nm Snapdragon Wear 4100+, which is what most Wear OS smartwatches are still using anyway. In other words, the Pixel Watch could still end up outperforming its contemporaries, especially if Google has some AI-powered tricks up its sleeves. Still, when every newer generation of smartwatch processors promises better power efficiency, launching a new smartwatch with an old, less efficient chipset could be a huge disadvantage. Hopefully, the Pixel Watch will have other things going for it, especially with a unique Pixel experience and health features it will inherit from Fitbit.